Even if you’re new to all things Mac, you’ve most likely already realized that your computer comes packed with a great selection of built-in applications designed to cater to most people’s basic needs. However, it’s when installing third-party apps that the fun can really start and there’s a massive amount of software available for OS X, much of it free or priced competitively.

It would be impossible to cover every single app in one article but we can make a good start here, so with this in mind let’s take a look at ten apps which should be considered an essential download or purchase for every new Mac user.

With Lion, Apple completely rethought the Mail.app interface, largely drawing from what they had done on the iPad. Along with the visual upgrades came some functionality boosts as well, such as vastly improved searching and a more robust tagging system.

Despite these efforts, many users are still flocking to third party email solutions. Sparrow has made a huge splash in the email world and brings a lot of innovation to this market in terms of UI. It’s simple, beautiful and still feature rich enough to use as your primary email client.

Another major competitor is Postbox, which has long held the spot as the go-to client for Mac users who want a truly powerful alternative to Mail.app. The Postbox conversation reply formatting put’s Mail’s to shame and the entire client tightly and effortlessly integrates with your favorite Google services.

The question we want to know today is, “which is your favorite?” For those of us that work at our computers, email can be something that eats up a significant portion of our week and it’s important to make sure we use a client that makes our workflow as easy and efficient as possible. Cast your vote for your favorite client and leave a comment below telling us why you use the one that you do.

Our featured sponsor this week is xPlan, a powerful, friendly and attractive project management application.

Project management tools tend to be both complicated and expensive. If you’re a small business owner or are just new to this category in general, you need something that’s affordable and approachable without sacrificing important features. The tool you’re looking for is xPlan. With it, creating, tracking and managing your projects will be much easier than ever!

xPlan is designed to keep track of tasks and calculate a project’s cost. The easy to read Gantt Chart interface gives you a graphical representation of your projects including tasks, resources, start and end dates, milestones and completion. You can also import/export Microsoft Office documents and share your projects online so collaboration with others is a snap.

Go Get It!

If you’re in the market for a better way to manage your team or small business, xPlan is the way to go. It’s overflowing with useful features while remaining simple enough that you can easily implement it quickly across your entire team. For more information, or to pick up a trial copy, check out the xPlan website today.

The news that has dominated the Apple newssphere this week has been the launch of the new iPad on Friday in 10 countries around the world, with further launches scheduled for the next week. However if you’re not bothered about this new iPad model (or you’ve already got one), then here’s Mac AppStorm’s weekly roundup of the news in the Mac software world.(more…)

Adium, the popular free open-source chat client for OS X which supports multiple IM protocols (including Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and Facebook) has been given its first update in a year and a half, bringing it up to version 1.5.(more…)

Apple has released another update to Safari, version 5.1.4, which has a total of 83 improvements to its performance, stability and, most importantly, security. The renewed offering of Apple’s default browser, which was released on Monday via the Software Update, is available to OS X Snow Leopard and Lion users and clocks in at roughly 45 MB download size (depending on your OS).(more…)

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on March 30th, 2011.

One of the great things about Macs is the high resale value they maintain over time. In the last 4 years alone, I’ve never had to pay more than $300 out-of-pocket for a brand-new Macintosh, and that’s because I’ve been able to get the most value from the Macs I’ve sold!

I’ve put together a simple list of everything to consider when you go to sell your Mac. Read on past the break and we’ll look at some steps for getting the most out of selling your Mac.

Winners Announced

Thanks to everyone who took part in the giveaway this week, and special thanks to the kind people at Bundlehunt! I’m excited to let you know that the winners have now been chosen. Congratulations are in order to:

abronzetiger
T J

Well done to the lucky winners, and we’ll be in touch soon. Sorry to those who missed out, be sure to check back for more great competitions!

Old Competition Post

Meet the Ultimate Mac App Collection – the latest bundle from BundleHunt. It features 7 of the best-selling Mac apps available today. At AppStorm we’re excited to offer you the chance to win one of the bundles!

The Spring Bundle features an awesome selection apps that collectively retail for $370, with BundleHunt you can get them for a mere $49.99, with AppStorm you get the chance to walk away with one for free!

Who here likes music? Yep, that’s what I thought, everybody. Some might go so far as to say, it’s what makes us — or at times perhaps keeps us — human.

Music tastes are as diverse as we ourselves. And we seem to be constantly on the prowl for more. Enterprising people noticed this fact, and decided to see what they could do in the world of web apps to help satisfy this constant need.

One such web app which appeared was Last.fm. And while its extensive feature set isn’t the topic of today’s article, one interesting feature of Last.fm is scrobbling. Scrobbling is a unique aspect to the Last.fm music streaming service, and for a lot of people, its best feature.

But this is 2012, a decade since Last.fm launched, and there are a myriad of music streaming services today. But none of them have tried to duplicate Last.fm’s scrobbling functionality, or the in-depth statistics that it generates. Why? Well, I suspect a big reason is that Last.fm has an API that allows developers to tie into Last.fm’s scrobbling service. Today we have for you seven Mac apps that support Last.fm’s scrobbling API.

During Apple’s recent announcement of the “New iPad,” Tim Cook dropped the term “post-PC” so much that it became distracting. One thing is for sure, Apple wants to drill this concept into your brain. They know where the future of the industry is and they’re making dang sure you’re on board with their self-fulfilling prophecy.

According to some recent statistics from mobiThinking, Cook is right. They estimate that 25% of U.S. mobile web users are mobile-only, meaning their primary way of accessing the web fits nicely into their pocket.

Today we want to put some of these concepts to the test by asking which device you primarily use to access the web. Do you mostly browse on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone? After you vote in the poll, leave a comment below telling us what you use and why.